It's the Little Things That Hurt

Today, I was digging through my laptop, trying to find every last picture of Puckett and Lana that I'd yet to upload to Picasa. As I was prepping the pix to upload, I had a depressing realization: I'll need to remove Puckett and Lana from my Picasa quick-tagging options.

This was perhaps one of my favorite pictures of them. They were sitting on the floor at my couch begging for whatever I was eating at the time (actually, I think they were hanging out long after I'd finished eating). I got my camera to take a picture. As I was about to hit the capture button, Lana started to yawn and the flash made Puckett squint. The result is a picture that looks like her guffaw'ing and him snickering. I've had it as my cellphone wallpaper for nearly two, years, now.

Moments of Loss

Death is an interesting thing. Doesn't matter whether it's someone you loved - family, friend, dear pet, etc. - or someone you just spent a fair amount of time with (such as a co-worker), it has an effect on the survivors. The effects are immediate and they can be "here and there" for a long time.

It's the latter that are the most interesting, as you never know when they're going to happen or what's going to trigger them. I've come to refer to these as "moments of loss".With the recent loss of Puckett, we're still in that period where lots of little "moments of loss" occur.

My first real moment of loss, the day after we put Puckett down, was waking up to an empty dog pillow. When I turned to get out of bed, my feet didn't bump warm, slumbering dog-body. They just hit a cold, empty dog-pillow.

Donna's first real moment of loss came as she was preparing dinner. Puckett was always underfoot, particularly during food-prep - especially when Donna was chopping onions. Bad as onions can be for dogs, Puckett always loved them. As she prepped dinner, an errant piece of onion flew from her cutting board and landed on the floor. No dog was hovering at the ready to scarf it up. It just lay there, unclaimed.

End Times

So, we'd thought that we were going to have to put Puckett down, tomorrow. His cancer was aggressively advancing and he was looking thinner by the day. He was starting to have trouble holding down food or having interest in but all the most favorite morsels - fresh meats, peanutbutter, cheeses and the like. He'd lost interest in his rice and was eating around it. So, we'd switched to all meat & vegetable  dinners and hand-feeding him bits of meat, peanutbutter, and cheese any time we passed through the kitchen.

Sometime before I woke up, this morning, he'd scratched open the tumor on his head. Not wanting him to get an infection - even if there might only be a few days (or less) left - I brought him into the bathroom to clean up and treat the wound. My bathroom's a little on the small side. So, to get the door closed to prevent dog-escapes, I have to manhandle him. I decided to just lift him up from his bed and carry him in to make the whole thing easier. It was at that point that I realized just how much weight the cancer had taken from him: he was noticably lighter than his normal 57lbs; he was noticeably lighter than Lana had been when I'd had to carry her body from the vet's; he felt like he might actually even be approaching Cira's 42lbs. So, I knew we were close.

While I knew we were close to the end-date, we thought we had a little more time. We'd already gotten our prefered vets' schedules for the week when Donna had gone in to get him the anti-nausea medications. Friday, both of our regular vets were scheduled to be in. So, we figured, given the recent rate of decline and our preferred vets' schedules, that we'd do it Friday.

Today, when I came home from work, he was still taking handouts, but he seemed like he was doing it because it was his favorites, not because he had any real interest. So, I called and made the appointment. Then, we went out for one last walk, because it was a really beautiful day. I'd have put him in my convertible and taken him for a drive in the open air, but, it was the thick of Northern Virginia rushour (and would have been pointless). Donna had already taken Cira out from a longish walk. I was only intending to take him down to the end of the block and back. The effort of even that was noticeably wearing on him. But, as I was about to turn us around and head home, I noticed Donna and Cira coming up the next street. So, I waited for them to get closer, figuring the four of us could walk back home, together.

Donna wanted to take Puckett on one last visit to our local boarding kennel (Royal Pet Kennel). One of Donna's friends is on staff and was fond of Puckett (in all honesty, I don't know anyone that spent any time with him that wasn't fond of him). So, we extended our walk a little bit and went to see if Donna's friend was in. She was, so, we hung out a bit and let her say her goodbyes to him. Then, we walked home.

Donna opted to stay out on the front porch and enjoy some sun-time  in her rocking chair. She fetched up a bag of chips and a drink, got a pillow for Cira to lay on and hung out.

I went in to get Puckett a drink and try to feed him some more treats. He drank heartily - with the sloppy gusto that he'd always sloshed his water dish with. Though, in retrospect, there was a bit of desperation to it rather than just gusto. We'd kind of been thinking that the cancer may have been spreading from his lungs to his kidneys. The water said that was probably true. I left him out into the back yard so he could go to the bathroom. He took what, for recent trends, was a very short break. He didn't seem terribly interested in the usual sniffing about and lolly-gagging that he always indulged in on days as temparate and sunny as today.

I went out front to let Donna know he was seeming a bit out of it. She'd had enough of her chips and handed me them to bring back into the house. I figured, offer one to Puckett. He had no interest. Worried, I went into the kitchen and dipped my index finger into the jar of Jif and offered it to him. No interest. At that point, I knew that we couldn't wait for the planned exit. If he was refusing a finger of peanutbutter, he was in dire straights - probably in pain or discomfort that he couldn't communicate in any other effective way. I went out onto the front porch to show Donna the untouched peanutbutter. We agreed that we should take him down to the vet, post-haste. So, I called and got the ok to bring him in, immediately.

For better or worse, our vets' practice is just down the hill from us. So, it was a short trip - the only thing keeping us from getting there in under five minutes being the traffic along the one-mile route. I was already starting to fall apart, so, I had Donna go in and sign him in while I waited with him in the car. It was a short wait. They sent her out to get me and prepped the room while she did so. I walked him in, taking him down the very long hallway to the euthanasia room. The sign on the door said, "in use," so I thought, "damn: bad day for pets." No, the "in use" was to indicate that the room was waiting for us. They opened the door and directed us in, then summoned the duty-vet.

While we waited, they went through the paperwork with us. It was all too familiar, having just been through it only five months previous with Lana. Yes, we wanted to be in the room for the proceedings. Yes, we wanted the paw print. No, we didn't want to send his remains off for cremation - we'd already called Sunset Pet Services to let them know we'd need to use their after hours service. Then, they took Puckett out to get his catheter put in.

While he was off getting his catheter, I went up to take care of paying. Recently, I've been pumping most of my expenses through my Visa. Apparently, I'd left it at home. All I had with me was my AmEx - the same AmEx I'd paid for Lana's services with. I remarked that AmEx was apparently my personal death-card. Yeah, that's me - find the absurd and grim humor in any given situation. I'm perky like that.

They brought Puck back from getting his catheter in. The vet came in a short time later. She wanted to confirm that we really wanted to be present. She wanted to make sure we were ready for what we were about to see. I cut her off - letting her know we appreciated the cautions, but that we'd been through it just a few months previous, so were well aware of how it could go down and the steps involved.

Pets should never become sick in such short succession to each other that your vet's euthenasia discussion feels like when the stewardesses go through their seatbelt and breathing-mask spiel.

The vet laid a towel down on the floor and Puckett sorta laid half on and half off of it. Mook: always had to be goofy with things.

She prepped her syringes: the three salines for clearing the line; the knock-down anesthetic of milky bliss (Propofol); and the vial I've come to think of a "pink death" (probably some kind of sodium pentobarbital cocktail). Much like the euthanasia talk shouldn't be like the stewardess speech, one should never be familiar enough with the chemical agents to have nicknames for them. Dunno how vets are able to do it - it's such an awful task. Then again, I used to have problems watching the emergency vet shows on Animal Planet.

She pumped in the first of the salines to ensure that the catheter was clear. Then, came the milky bliss. Within seconds, he was pancaked. The last voluntary motion from him being a final, vigorous wag of the tail. It happened quicker than Lana's had. Didn't even really have time to see him flutter his eyes. Then, another syringe of saline to make way for the pink death. Finally, the pink death was started in. I felt him leave even before the last of the vial was gone. The vet seemed kind of surprised for me to say it, because it usually takes longer. But, when she applied her stethoscope, she confirmed that he had in fact passed.

Death is funny: you can feel "something" leave; you can see the eyes go from alive to being utterly empty. What was them is just suddenly gone. Even more, you can feel it - whether they were previously conscious or if they've been comatose. Never really understood it until I watched family die. It was really driven home by recently watching two pets be euthanised. I'm not spiritual. I'm not religious. But, when you're there for the moment that someone or something passes from alive to dead, you feel it.

The vet asked if we wanted time with his body before they took him for cleanup. Such an odd question. 

I'm generally not the most emotionally demonstrative person in the world. I didn't really cry at the death of my grandparents. I didn't even really grieve all that much when my dad died, two Novembers ago. But damned if I wasn't absolutely racked with great, heaving sobs of grief. For a dog. Not a human. Not my blood relations. For a dog. The rational part of me just can't rectify it other than that the deaths of humans I've witnessed or attended to, I played no part in. Even when you know it's the right thing, seeing to the death of a loved one - even if it's just a pet - is unbelievably hard.

After I got through the worst of it, Donna asked if she should go get the vet staff so they could take care of Puckett's body. Body. Yep. At that point, that's all it was: just a body. Puckett was gone - well and truly gone. She left the room and sought out a staffer. While she was gone, another wave of grief wracked me. It suddenly struck me, "crap: this might trigger a seizure." It was probably just the hyperventilation making me feel weird, but I didn't trust that I wouldn't have a seizure. So, I gave Donna the keys to the SUV and asked that she drive. 

The vet techs came in and asked if we wanted him put in a coffin. I've been down that road many years ago when cancer took my rabbit, BamBam. In vet parlance, a "coffin" is little more than a cardboard box barely large enough to hold the body. Sorry, but this was a family member, not something I'm gonna send via FedEx. We'd brought a large towel and his death-shrouds, at any rate. So, I politely declined the box, indicating we'd brought the towel. The techs and I carefully ensconced Puckett's body in the towel - they were nice enough to bring diaper-like pads to help control any post-mortem leakage on the journey home. I picked up the awkward yet disturbingly-light bundle and carried him out to the truck, bundled him into the back seat and set next to him, on it.

Donna drove us home. Traffic seemed oddly light. Then again, the sun sets later this time of year. Puckett's heart had stopped right around sunset, it seems. It was actually well after seven at this point - we'd apparently arrived a little before six PM. What feels like such a quick process actually takes surprisingly long. For both Lana and Puckett, we were at the vet for over an hour's time, each.

She pulled into the driveway. I got out of the truck, went into the house and into the back yard so I could unlatch and open the back gate. I came back down to the truck and carried his body to the back porch so Donna could prepare his body for delivery to the cremation service.

When a pet dies, Donna likes to send them off the right way. She likes to make them a set of shrouds to wrap them in and cover the outside of the bundle with the various names we'd called the pet during their life. The suddenness with which Lana's decline had crept up on us had meant she'd had to place the names using a sharpie. The slow nature of Puckett's decline meant she'd had time to hand-embroider his names into the sunny yellow exterior cloth. With blue embroidery floss, she'd placed names like: Puckett; Pucketty-Puck, Mook, Mooktastic, Mookenstein, Pucklehead and Indawä. The last was just a way of putting into a single word his tendency to always be under foot or "in the way". The yellow cloth was to commemorate the sunniness that was his personality.

It was kind of an odd, yet very fitting procedure. When I laid him down on the back porch, he kind of rolled over onto his back, his body assuming the same playful pose he often had in life. The way his lips sort of drew away (by gravity) even looked kind of like he was smiling.

We got the blue cloth, and placed him carfully on it, tucking his legs up against his body and tucking his chin towards his chest. Then we began to roll him up into the first cloth. As we got near the end of that length of cloth, his tail flopped out. It was like he was trying to wag his tail one last time. We carefully tucked his tail back in and then began rolling him into the embroidered, yellow cloth. Once wrapped up, Donna began to stich him into it. It occurred to me, if we're sending him off this way, we should send him off with a favorite. So, I grabbed one of the previous night's remaining hamburger rolls, slathered it with peanutbutter, and had Donna tuck it in with him.

I came out a while later to check on the progress. Donna had him all but completely stiched in. Much as he'd seemed to try to wag his tail while we did the initial wrap, he'd slobbered through his shrouds. Lana hadn't done that during her wrapup. So, it seemed like yet another, last, Puckett-y thing.

I called Sunset and let them know we were on the way. We drove out the all too familiar route to Sunset. When we got there, I got out and rang the night-bell. The staffer came out, we put his body on the cart, then went inside to fill out the paperwork. Paperwork done, I joined Donna at Puckett's body and we bid one more tearful goodbye to him. Then, we drove home.

House feels empty, somehow. I've got another dog, laying on her dog bed, working on a bone-toy. I've got a cat curled up at my hip as I write. Another cat is skulking about the house. Donna is sitting behind me quilting as we have a really awful zombie flick on NetFlix Streaming. Still, with all this life around me and the noise from the TV, the house feels quiet and empty.

 

If anyone actually reads this, sorry it was so long. I had to spill this all out so I have it to re-read later. It's gonna take a while for me to process. In the meantime, I can do a version of retail therapy and look through PetFinder.Com in hopes of finding another bundle of life to fill the gaping hole left by Puckett's departure.

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This would be about the time that you have to whip out the Benny Hill Look #5

Morning Revelations

Got up, this morning to start my daily routine. The last couple weeks, this routine has included letting Puckett out. Used to be, I'd go about my morning routines, alone, and Donna would let the pets out when she got up. Since being put on the steroids, Puckett's allowable time between bathroom breaks is greatly-reduced (he's drinking a lot of water and, naturally, is also producing a lot of urine).

When I brought him down, this morning, I'd noticed he'd scratched one of his tumors open. So, after feeding him some peanut-covered bread and a peanut-covered rice-ball, I took him back upstairs so I could take my shower. Before hopping in the shower, I decided to clean out where he'd scratched himself open. I dunno that he has enough time left for it to get infected, but I don't want to take the chance, either. So, I picked him up to go wash out the wound (he tends to resist going into the bathroom for cleanings and I didn't feel like the fight). He's definitely lost/losing weight. He feels like he weighs less than Lana did and probably not much more than Cira does. So, it's probably safe to assume he's dropped out of the 50lb range. This in a dog whose life-long, healthy weight was around 57lbs.

The Time Draws Close

Ugh. I feel like one of those sign-whackos you see out in front of public spaces. I feel like I should have a sign saying "the end is nigh".

Now that I'm home from work, I'm able to see that Puckett's noticeably skinnier, this evening, than he was last night before bed. I can actually see his heart beating through his chest (though, at least, his breathing doesn't seem labored, right now) and his face is so bony-looking.

I'd end it, tonight, but I'm not about to do something that requires me using the "night depository" at the pet crematorium. He deserves better than being left in a drop-box, even if what would be left wouldn't really be him.

I've got stuff at work that pretty much has to be done, or I"d do it tomorrow, during the day. Fortunately, both the vets that have been seeing after him, the past few years, are on duty, Friday. So, assuming he can wait that long (or doesn't experience some kind of miracle before then), we'll take him in and send him off.

Just Number Psychology

So, I'm at work and, while waiting for a program to run, decide to bop on over to CNN's website to see what the latest developments in the ongoing nuclear drama were. The one article cited extremely high levels of radioactivity, indicating levels in the area of 1000 millisieverts.

As may have come through in prior writings, I'm a bit of a geek. I work with computers, so, it's almost a requirement. Part of being a tech-geek is understaning the concept of "units". Along with that is understanding what the various unit-modifiers mean. Now, while I'm not advocating the US going out and switching from our current measurment system to metric, I do appreciate (and understand) base-ten unit modifiers. So, when I see someone say the equivalent of "one thousand thousandths" (or one million millionths, for that matter), it makes my OCD senses tingel.

When I see that kind of units-abuse,  I have to wonder, "is the author just stupid or are they scare-mongering by using (apparently) bigger numbers?" I've had other geeks try to suggest that said authors might be trying to indicate precision, but that gets blown out of the water the moment a reporter couches things in terms of estimates or "about".

The vast majority of readers out there aren't going to know that 1000mSv is equivalent to 1Sv. Few people know what an Sv is to even begin to understand what an mSv or μSv might mean. Worse, since many of the readers of CNN will be US readers with little to know background in the metric system, there won't be any automatic "milli equals one thousandth of something". No. All that most readers will see is "there's a thousand of these thingies happening every hour. That sounds like a LOT!" and, granted, it is, but no more than one of the base-unit would be.

Interesting Saturday Night

We were sitting in the living room, watching TV, deciding whether to go to bed or watch a movie, online (we really know how to rock a Saturday night, eh?) when we heard a "boom" rattle the windows. Initially, I'd processed it as the house next door's front door slamming. This struck me as odd, given that the previous tenants had moved out a few days ago. I noticed a car with Maryland plates parked out front. This seemed suspicious, so, we called the EMS non-emergency dispatch number to see if they could send a car by to check things out.>/p>
As I was standing on the front porch, I noticed a strange pickup truck sitting across the street with white smoke curling out the windows. Initially I thought, "some idiot decided to park on my street to hit a doob. If they're smart, they'll notice I'm on the phone and roll out before the cops get here and really didn't think much further of it.
Apparently, the boom we'd heard wasn't from next door. Apparently, something had exploded inside the truck's cab and the smoke was the interior burning. Wasn't until another neighbor, woken by what had turned out to be the truck going "boom", decided to investigate the smoking truck. He walked over, jiggled on the door and it popped open. Thick, white smoke came billowing out. With the sudden influx of fresh air, the smoking interior became a firey interior. So, I informed the dispatcher I was on the phone with that they probably needed to treat this as a 911 fire call.
A little less than five minutes later, Fairfax County police cars started rolling up. One officer pulled an extinguisher out of his car and attempted to extinguish the fire that was now licking up from where the hood and windshield meet. It didn't work.
A minute or so later, the fire trucks rolled up. A fireman walked up, fully fitted out with helmet, fire clothing and oxygen mask and opened the door, fully. Fire came billowing out.
Unfortunately, my camera's ability to cope with the bright light of the fire against the dark of the night meant I couldn't get good photos of the fire. It was pretty much just an orange flare in the center of the image. After they got the fire knocked down, I was able to take the below picture.

EMS are still outside dealing with the aftermath. I imagine, once they've determined the fire is fully out, they'll flatbed the truck away.
If you're from Manassas (cop that came up asked if we'd seen it before since it was registered to a Manassas address) and missing a big, white crew-cab pickup truck, I think I know where it might have gotten left (and, presumably, set on fire by whoever boosted it). Fairfax County Police Department will be able to tell you where to go pick up the burnt-out husk. Hopefully, your insurance company totals it: I know I wouldn't want it back, at this point.

Too Short A Time

Looking back through pictures, earliest I can find of Puckett are late-June 2004. So, I did some research. Looks like we got him on or about 6/20/2004 (though, our first encounter with him was a week or so earlier). Still... We'll have had him not even 7 years when we finally have to send him on his way. 

Note to self: don't dig for answers you might not like. It was gut-punch enough getting the news of his impending demise. Pinning down the date to one that was far later that you'd specifically recalled just "piles on".

Fire-and-Forget Memories

So, a lot of people I know write stuff online. They write on LiveJournal. They write on Blogger/BlogSpot. They write on Twitter. They write on FaceBook. They write on any of dozens of other sites. Many, like me, frequently choose to write about things both personal/private and more mundane "public" stuff. However, I wonder if the people that write all this stuff are like me in why they write.

For me, writing online is about preserving memories. Part of preserving memories is going back and periodically reviewing things. For me, it can act as a grounding-force. I can tell whether the high/low/whatever of the current moment is normal, an aberation or part of some kind of a pattern. It can help me remember - or even just refresh - the character, the feeling or flavor of the things written about. It can also remind me of "promises" I've made to myself and to see how well I've done in those.

A big part of why I scatter my writings in so many places (and make the vast majority findable by search engines) is so that they don't become lost. If one site goes away, I don't lose an entire chunk of memories - of my life. To me, what I've written for myself is critical.

As I do with my own writings, I sometimes look back through things friends have written. Sometimes it's just a random perusal. Sometimes it's with a purpose. Sadly, it seems that in a non-trivial number of cases, people write things so that they can get them off their chest ...and then summarily forget them. It makes me wonder, why they're committing it to "Internet Memory" at all? Wouldn't it make just as much sense to write it on a piece of paper and then just burn it? Or, for that matter, why write it down at all? Introspection absent review isn't really introspection.

I swear: the longer I'm around and the more I interact with - or even merely observe - people, the less I understand them.

This Is What Death Looks Like

So, we took Puckett to see the vet, this morning. Much as I'd feared, his cutaneous lymphoma appears to have spread to his lungs. The vet took X-rays, to eliminate the possibility that he might just have kennel-cough. Normally, they take a sequence of three X-rays to get a good view of both lungs and along two axes. The vet only bothered to take one picture (shown below):

Canine Lung Cancer

On the plus side, we didn't have to involve a radiologist to read an iffy X-ray. We also didn't have to subject him to a CT scan. We didn't even have to subject him to the full rigor of being held still for three X-rays. Pretty much anyone can look at the above and know it's bad juju. I mean, that's just a view of one lung from one axis and you can see quite a number of masses. To me, it looks like his lung is a third cancerous tissue, at this point. I don't know how he manages to breath as well as he does.

Hard to believe how fast his clock has been running-out. It was just last month that we got the cutaneous lymphoma diagnosis. And, it was only in the last few days that he just sorta fell off a cliff, symptom-wise. I'd been hoping-against-hope that it wasn't going to be this. I'd been hoping that he'd beat the averages. Unfortunately, the only way he's beating the average is in just how aggressively the cancer has progressed and spread. "Like wildfire" doesn't seem to do it justice.

As I sit here, typing away on my couch, Puckett lies breathing, fast and shallow, next to me. Unless the steroids work miracles (i.e., make his breathing less labored and reduce the irritation in his lungs so the coughing stops), I'm thinking I'm saying my final goodbyes come Monday. In the mean time, I'll try to use these last hours to spoil him (thus, why he's got couch privileges after a lifetime without). Even the other animals seem to "know": Cira's curled up on the floor below him and Grumbles is curled up next to him on the couch. Even Bella doesn't seem to be offended by his presence in her nesting-space.

Winding Down

So, a month or so ago, my dog, Puckett, was diagnosed with cutaneous lymphoma. It's pretty much a death-sentence as it's not a type of cancer that responds well to the usual cancer treatment options and, even if it does respond, it has a high incidence of recurrence. In that month's time, I've seen an 11yr old dog go from an energy level and demeanor that caused most people to guess his age at maybe a third his actual age to seeming like an eleven year old dog.

When I say he used to act like a dog a third his age, I'm not kidding. Included in the people fooled, by Puckett's energy, have been neighbors that have known us more than four or five years (and did pet lookins when we were out of town), vets and vet techs who'd not yet looked at his file. Of course, people new to him, were always immediately fooled.

It just seems like, in the last thirty days, the full weight of eleven years of life have come slamming down on him. The initial diagnosis said that dogs with his condition average about six months from diagnosis. That projection was based on later detection than was his case. So, I was hopeful that he might go on the long side of that death-sentence. With his recent, sudden aging, I'm feeling like I might be lucky if he makes it to summer.

Today, the sudden aging really struck home. Throughout the entire time that Puckett has been with us:

• He was always the first dog at the door. He was always the most exuberant. This last week, especially, he's no longer at the front of the lineup - he's sorta hanging back, waiting his turn for the hellos.
• You could always tell when he was near a wall, standing near a table, next to the kitchen island, counters or appliances or even positioned "just right" in a doorway by the loud banging of his tail. And, if he happend to be standing in a corner, where his tail would hit two surfaces, it was a loud, stacatto drum-beat of enthusiasm. His wag was always done with such energy and vigor that, even if it wasn't banging against something, it made is head bob about as some kind of counter-balance. His wag has been so everpresent that he even frequently wags in his sleep (a bit disconcerting a phenomena). He's still wagging his tail, but it's not with quite the same vigor and, it seems more that he's doing it in response to a request for it than doing it unbidden out of shear zeal for life.
• Except when drawn away by food or not being inside the house, he always followed me into the bathroom. I'd come to make it a habit to leave the door open, lest he stand there bumping at it till I let him in. Today, for the first time, as I sat there with the door open, he remained parked in the living room, resting.

He's also been a bit wheezy and generally tired the last week or so. His legs seem to be stiffening up. And, of course, the "coffin-nails" (what I've come to refer to his skin tumors) seem to be multiplying - as yet, most are detectable just as a disturbance in the lay of his fur rather then yet being felt by a stroke of his fur.

Tomorrow, I take him to the vet. I'm hoping that some of the energy levels and wheeziness are related to it being allergy season: I know my energy is sapped and my breathing gets ragged when the pollen count's really high. However, obviously, I fear that it's more than that. I fear that the vet's going to deliver yet more bad news that I just don't want to deal with, yet. And, if she does, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.

I've had a number of dogs over the years. Each has been special. I've celebrated the lives of each and grieved the loss of each. However, there's been something special about Puckett. I'm about the opposite of the permanent-happiness that Puckett affuses, so, I fear that losing him will effect me - the impending loss is effecting me - more than any previous pet has.

When we lost Lana in December, it seemed natural to get another dog. This has been how I and my family has proceeded upon losing a pet - try to find another bundle of life to help fill the hole left by the prior one. Cira's been a great dog. She's her own kind of sweet and her own kind of happy. She's not Lana, but I wasn't expecting her to be - any more than any prior "replacement" pet has been the same as its predecessor. Yet, with Puckett, I don't know whether I want to try to fill that hole. Or even if I do, whether I want to do it as immediately as I have with prior pets. Who knows - maybe the severity of the loss will make me want it more than in prior instances. Hell, it might take two dogs to "replace" his energy, presence and shear "Pucketty-ness". Dunno. Any way you slice it, I'm not looking forward to finding out, but it seems to be bearing down on me like a runaway truck. 

Best "Job" Spam Ever?

So, today, I find in my main email account's Inbox, one of those various "job opportunity" emails (you know, the ones that typically flog the "work from home" or "not MLM"). Well this one's job requirements were priceless:

Candidates:

• Efficacy to proceed efficaciously within a team and independently
• Native ability to resolve different intricacies
• Strong communication skills

My favorite is the first requirement. I wonder if the person who wrote that first requirement fulfills the third requirement?

Just... "Wow"

So, when I saw the previews, a few months' past, for Battle Los Angeles, I was fully prepared to not go see it in the theatres (maybe not even on NetFlix/Zune/OnDemand). It just didn't look like it was going to be any good.

Tonight, on our way back from downtown, we stopped in at a restaurant at the Potomoac Yards shopping center. After we got done with dinner, Donna wasn't yet feeling like going home, so she asked to drop by the theatre to see what might be playing. Now, this weekend, there happens to be a few movies I do actually want to see. So, I figured, "what the hell: it's twenty after eight, so, we're probably between showings of everything and we can just drive home after we confirm that." Wouldn't you fucking know it but Battle Los Angeles was set to start in less than half an hour. 

Fuck.

Now, I thought I had suitably lowered my expectations for this movie such that it wouldn't be a complete trial. Little did I know just how terrible this steaming-load was going to be. I mean, sure, if you wanted to sum it up in two words you could simply say, "it sucked," but that wouldn't really capture how truly craptacular the movie was. I mean, it was horrible. The guys from MST3K would probably have been left at a loss. You'd be getting to a part of the movie where you can just taste the pending relief of the movie soon being over. Only, the sadistic fuckers that made this piece of shit, would just be teasing and there'd be another 20 minutes or so ...until the next part where you were sure that it was almost over.

No, if I were to try to sum this movie up in two words, those words would be "irredeemably awful."

Air-Quotes Required

So, watched the Flyers drop another game to another mediocre team in OT. They played against the Atlanta Thrashers.

Can someone tell my why Atlanta has a hockey team? More people show up to the average D.I.Y. show at the local punk club than show up for a Thrashers game. I mean, I really think the arena-owners need to paint the seats to look like people are sitting in them. 

Every so often, the game announcers were mention how the fans really thought there should be a call there. Or the fans seemed really unhappy about that one. Or how plays like that really make the fans stand up in their seats.

I mean, the place was s fucking ghost-town. I have to wonder, are sportscasters required to use air-quotes whenever talking about "the crowd" at Atlanta Thrashers games? I'm pretty sure if I were in their place, I'd be pantomiming quotes any time I mentioned "the crowd", there.

Ugh.

How Not to be "That Guy" At a Punk Show

I'll start this off by admitting that I'm an old guy for still going to concerts. I'm 41 as of this writing. I'm not yet the oldest guy at the various showsI go to, but I'm definitely at the upper end of the age spectrum. I've been going to shows since my late teen years. So, I've seen a lot of shows and a lot of changes in how attendees act at shows in that time. I dunno whether it's just my age or if people are actually managing to become more idiotic at shows. However, last night, while riding-out the pit at The Adicts show at The Otto Bar, it definitely seemed like there was an ungodly number of idiots present. In fact, it was one of the worst shows - in terms of sheer amount of audience idiocy - that I've been to in over 20 years of going to live shows.

Let me start by saying, I love a good, active pit. That said, there's a lot of things that can make a good, active pit into a royal pain in the ass like the one at the Otto Bar, last night. Chances are, if you're doing any of the following, you're contributing to fucking up an otherwise good pit:

• If you're over 150-180 lbs. don't try to crowd-surf. It ain't cool. You're too fucking heavy.
• If you do decide to crowd-surf, keep your fucking feet under control. While I'm not out to intentionally hurt anyone at a show, if you kick me or one of the people I'm with, I will find you and I will fuck your shit up.
• Don't try to use random strangers as your climbing-pole to start your surf. I'm a big guy and have a fairly good ability to anchor an area of the pit: that doesn't mean I want you trying to use me like a ladder. If you ask nicely (and aren't obviously way too heavy to be crowd surfing) I'll probably be happy to help you up. If you just start climbing, univited, I'll shug you off. If you take a second shot at it, I will elbow you in the jaw and I will try to loosen your teeth. If you do it a third time, I will slam you down and beat on you. I'm not alone in this.
• If I see you climing up on something (that's several feet higher than the crowd) in readiness to jump down on the crowd, I will make sure that where you land suddenly becomes devoid of people (see prior note on being big: I am easily able to push a significant number of people more than enough distance to make sure that your landing will be on concrete rather than on skulls.
• If you get surfed up to the stage, don't belly flop, as hard as you can, onto the crowd. Lay yourself down easy. If your actions hurt me or the people I'm with, you can count on the pain you receive in return being far worse than what you dished out with your idiocy
• If you violate any of the above more than once, each time you do it in my reach, the repurcussions will be incrementally worse.
• (and this is a first) If you just had surgery that day, just because you're still drugged up and can't feel the pain doesn't mean it's a good idea to go into a pit. Even if you didn't destroy your stitches, you're probably getting so much dirty-punk funk in the surgical wound that you're risking fun things like gangrene. Personally, I don't feel like having to pay into the public welfare system to support your stupid ass when you lose a hand because you had to go into a pit with an open wound.

Don't be a fucking meathead.

Couple notes to the women out there:

• Just because your female doesn't exclude you from the 150lbs rule
• Just because you're female doesn't exclude you from the keep your feet under control (particularly if you're wearing in appropriate footwear)
• Speaking of inappropriate footwear: heeled boots, flip-flops and too-loose sneekers fall into this category
• You might want to consider wearing something that keeps you from spilling out of your top
• You migh want to make an effort to not surf face-side down (I dunno, maybe you're into being violently-groped: if that's your thing, cool)
• While I won't take the first shot, if you take a shot at me, I will put you down.

Contrary to what the girl-pants wearing under-25 set seems to think, a good pit isn't determined by how many people you injure. If you think it does, then you're, inevitably, going to find out just how hurt it's possible to get at a show. It might not be me, but it will likely be someone you've pissed off as much as you've pissed me off. At least if it's me doing it, there'll be limits to the punishment. Others might not be so "nice" about it.

Unexpected Audiences

Ugh...

So, I posted up an article on doing Active Directory based authentication on Linux systems. Specifically, I discussed how to get around issues encountered with using the LikeWise product in a complex (messy) Active Directory environment. I figured that maybe some Linux geek that had to use this product in a complex environment might run into issues such as I had. When I had run into those issues, since it was a "free" version of a commercial product, there was no support to fall back on beyond the product's forums and Google. Neither resource was useful to me. So, in the spirit of "giving back", I wrote my article.

Today, I got an unsolicited email from someone (possibly just a bot) at Centrify. Apparently, they've got web-scrubbers out there either searching for articles on competing products or just the Linux/AD topic, in general. At any rate, they apparently found my article and sent me an email. Basically, it was some sales person trying to elicit interest in their product (Centrify). Since the authentication product chosen wasn't my choice (I just had to get it working outside of the lab), I'm not exactly the best person to spam. I'm just a tech who has to figure out how to make the various steaming piles of technology work.

Now, I get that these guys are trying to move product, and all, but, still... It's a touch creepy when these kinds of things happen. I mean, it's nice to think that someone's reading my tech blog, but it would be much nicer if people were finding it useful and not just as an avenue for trying to sell me stuff.

Oh well: life on the modern web, I suppose.

Death of the "X" O'clock News Teaser?

So, I'm sitting at home, alone, tonight, watching TV. Well, to be more honest, I'm sitting around using StumbleUpon to kill time and periodically checking in on FaceBook. The TV's mostly on for background noise At any rate, as I sit here, tapping away at my laptop, one of the local TV stations has a blurb for their 11 o'clock local news show. It's like a 15-second blurb, so, all they really say is "we'll check out story 'X' on tonight's news hour."

Now, this is something that I've heard, in one form or another, since I was a kid. I'm sure it wasn't a new way to entice viewers, even in the 1970s. For some reason, though, tonight it occurred to me, "what's the point of the news teaser?" I mean, it did make sense even as recently as 5-10 years ago, but why bother, any more. I mean, if I haven't already been alerted to this story by FaceBook, Twitter, some other social media outlet or just general reading of news sites, hitting me with the teaser isn't going to make me wait around until whatever time you want to put that news story on. No: I'll hit up my favorite search engine and see if I can find out what you were hinting at. When you finally get your new hour on the air, it will be old news to me. Either it will be of little interest to me, by which point, the Internet-as-spoiler will have removed my desire to tune in, or I will have already read extensively about it from a variety of sources. Either way, waiting for your new show is pointless.

In other words, at this point in the game, the news show "teaser" does more to discourage viewership than it does to entice viewership. Besides: your news show conflicts with other programming (like Adult Swim) that I won't need to miss, thanks to you alerting me to the need to do an Internet-search.

Blogging as Mental Barometer?

Mood/mental state definitely effects my writing output. Throughout 2010, with the exception of the week that I was at sea, I was averaging nearly 40 posts to my BlogSpot per week (with some weeks producing as much as 60-80 posts). My production, this year seems to be less than ten per week (with last week being completely post-free).

 

Dunno how much of the current mental state is related to the loss of our dog Lana; how much is related to the terminal cancer diagnosis for my dog, Puckett (though, the week following that diagnosis was a "no posts" week); or, how much is related to other "life-pressures". Clearly, however, 2011 is, thus far, not a good year for expressing myself (I believe my already low spoken-word and other types of output are markedly down, as well).

 

Interesting. I'll have to keep a watch on things and see how closely it tracks.

Dear Microsoft...

Please stop back-revving my video drivers on Patch Tuesdays. It's really distressing to come down on a Wednesday morning to the sound of the fan whining on my laptop because the system is so busy having to restart crashed video drivers every few seconds. It's really distressing to discover that what you thought was plenty of time to get up, get showered, get breakfast and get out the door to be in the office early is actually going to result in being late because you have to re-find working video drivers (all while coping with a system made mind-bendingly slow by the constantly crashing, back-revved video drivers).

The really interesting thing about all this, however, is that, my auto-update settings seem to get overwritten, every so often. As a rule, whenever I get a new computer, I specifically change my "recommended settings" from auto-update to the "auto-download but manually apply" option (so as to avoid these kinds of morning debacles). If I'm going to have to deal with a potentially unusable computer - particularly one I use for work - I want it to risk becoming unusable at a time that's convenient to me, not just whenever Microsoft wishes to push out patches that fuck me over.